---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 13:58:39 -0700
From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory <info@jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "sondheim@panix.com" <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: NASA Phoenix Mission Ready for Mars Landing
[NASA-NEWS-600-1172.GIF]
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters,Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu
NEWS RELEASE: 2008-074 May 13, 2008
NASA Phoenix Mission Ready for Mars Landing
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long
journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of
Martian soil and buried ice. The lander is scheduled to touch down on the
Red Planet May 25.
Phoenix will enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at almost 21,000
kilometers per hour (almost 13,000 mph). In seven minutes, the spacecraft
must complete a challenging sequence of events to slow to about 8
kilometers per hour (5 mph) before its three legs reach the ground.
Confirmation of the landing could come as early as 4:53 p.m. PDT (7:53
p.m. EDT).
"This is not a trip to grandma's house. Putting a spacecraft safely on
Mars is hard and risky," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"Internationally, fewer than half the attempts have succeeded."
Rocks large enough to spoil the landing or prevent opening of the solar
panels present the biggest known risk. However, images from the High
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, detailed enough to show individual rocks smaller
than the lander, have helped lessen that risk.
"We have blanketed nearly the entire landing area with HiRISE images,"
said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, chairman of the
Phoenix landing-site working group.
"This is one of the least rocky areas on all of Mars and we are confident
that rocks will not detrimentally impact the ability of Phoenix to land
safely."
Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was
canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a
1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in
2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science
opportunity.
Earlier in 2002, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered that plentiful
water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude
Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become
the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected
missions. "Phoenix will land farther north on Mars than any previous
mission," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
"The Phoenix mission not only studies the northern permafrost region,
but takes the next step in Mars exploration by determining whether this
region, which may encompass as much as 25 percent of the Martian surface,
is habitable," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the
University of Arizona, Tucson.
The solar-powered robotic lander will manipulate a 2.35 meter arm (7.7
foot) to scoop up samples of underground ice and soil lying above the
ice. Onboard laboratory instruments will analyze the samples. Cameras and
a Canadian-supplied weather station will supply other information about
the site's environment.
One research goal is to assess whether conditions at the site ever have
been favorable for microbial life. The composition and texture of soil
above the ice could give clues to whether the ice ever melts in response
to long-term climate cycles. Another important question is whether the
scooped-up samples contain carbon-based chemicals that are potential
building blocks and food for life.
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL. The
development partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. International
contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of
Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus,
Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish
Meteorological Institute.
For more about the Phoenix mission on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
-end-
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[1700536152.gif]

some granular
moire patterns
http://www.alansondheim.org/warv.bmphttp://www.alansondheim.org/woven.gif (large)
I don't want you to forget me. I don't want you to think I'm a nuisance. I
want you to know what my work's about. I want you to know it's poetics and
philosophy and it can be whatever you want it to be. You have to know
death the dead the death. You have to know they thought I'd be dead at
twenty-five. That I'd be dead at fifty. I thought I'd do Mozart at fifty.
I thought I'd be dead at forty-eight. My body is beginning to burn. My
body is burning up. My cells are dying faster and faster. I'm writing
faster than ever. I don't want you to think I'm out of fashion. I don't
want you to think all I do is make little mannequins jump around on stage.
I don't want you to think all I know are dirty words and dirty pictures. I
want you to know there's thought behind everything I do. I don't want you
to think I'm making art too fast too sloppy too unedited too quick too
arrogant too depressive too miserable too sick too abject too slick too
grotesque too contorted too maudlin too self-serving too much too thick
too repetitive too worthless too ugly. I don't want to defend myself. I
want you to see what I'm doing. I don't want you to think I'm too egoist
too egotistical too obscure too messy too narcissistic too
autobiographical too diaristic too much about nothing too dumb about
something. I don't want to lose you and I've already lost you. I want to
see you and my eyes my eyes. I want to follow you and my feet my feet. I
want to think you to think through you to think before you to think beyond
you and my brain my brain and my mind my mind. Oh things are as they have
always been. Oh the blackness is as it has always been. Oh death is on the
threshold. O Death do not be deceived. O You in pain and comfort this is
philosophy. O You in sicknesse unto death, thou readest between the lines,
thou readest line after line in desultory order, thou readest across and
through fallen lines, thou readest among broken and contorted lines, thou
readest across the surface of the differend, thou are drawn along, thou
art deferred, thou supersede thyself, do not desert me, I beg of thee, do
not desert me, one or another drawn from the past into the paste, drawn
from futility into the future, drawn from presence into the present. Do
not come with me unto an Other Land, retard me, hold me back, repress me,
restrain me, restrict me, curtail me. Oh I do not want you to forget me,
what I have written, what I have attempted to achieve, what I have
achieved, already in these fourteen years, already in these fifteen years,
in these sixteen years. For this is the length of an onslaught not
slaughter, and this is wavelength, not wave, neither the short nor the
long of it, the tall or the quick of it, the slow or the fast of it. This
is philosophy through image under erasure, through dusk-dawn imaginary,
through the shuffled feathers of the nighthawk in impenetrable swoop, this
is herald, this is all I can think of truth, ground, foundation, premise,
hypothesis, lemma, fabrication, shifting, shifter, effacement, disappear-
ance, evanescence, illumination, darkness and luminosity neither miracle
nor spirit, quantum in our effecting the world affecting ourselves and
difference spreading like plague across canon and genre, classic and
period alike.
blender/poser image manipulation transformed into 'old photo' thru gimp,
using mottling, border, sepia; the result is simulacrum of steam-punk
material
http://www.alansondheim.org/odal1.jpghttp://www.alansondheim.org/odal2.jpghttp://www.alansondheim.org/odal3.jpghttp://www.alansondheim.org/odal3.jpg